A new Comcast streaming TV service for college campuses, formally launched Thursday in a handful of schools, holds the promise of reducing schools’ bandwidth costs over time, college officials say.

The service, which includes about 80 live channels and a robust on-demand library that can be streamed to tablets, phones and other devices, doesn’t require a physical set top box and is free for students with their room and board fees. Among schools participating are Lasell College in Massachusetts, University of New Hampshire, Bridgewater College in Virginia and the University of Delaware.

For schools struggling with rising bandwidth needs from students streaming video services like Netflix and YouTube, Comcast is pitching that its service has an added attraction. The service travels over Comcast’s “managed” network in Internet protocol format—similar to cable video-on-demand or phone services. The traffic from those IP-based services travel on a special portion of Comcast’s cable pipe that is separate from the more congested portion reserved for public Internet access.

As a result, the service, due to its managed nature, would be unlikely to experience the sputters and stops that can affect Web video streaming over the public Internet.

More importantly colleges, which pay telecom providers for Internet bandwidth, would get a break on those costs because streaming the Comcast service won’t count toward a college’s Internet bandwidth capacity, a Comcast spokesman confirmed.

As a result, if students opt for the Comcast service over Netflix, colleges could see savings. One of the schools participating, Lasell College, estimates it could see a 15-20% decrease in bandwidth needs from students choosing to watch the new Comcast service instead of other Web video, which could lead to savings of $3,000 to $5,000 a year on what the college is paying for bandwidth, according to Michelle Gaseau, a spokeswoman for Lasell.

Several of the schools say that students won’t see fee increases as a result of the service. At least two said that was because the service won’t cost much more than what they were previously paying for cable.

So while Netflix will still cost students at least $7.99 a month, Comcast’s streaming TV will be available at no additional cost. (Caveat: we all know students who still use their parents’ Netflix logins and passwords. The cost likely won’t be a factor for them.)

Netflix has raised plenty of concerns already about Comcast’s clout in the Internet. It is opposing Comcast’s proposed $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable, citing the resulting power the cable giant will have over the broadband marketplace. Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings has sharply criticized Comcast and other big Internet service providers’ demands for payments for “interconnection” deals that directly link Netflix’s servers to their networks and improve video delivery. Comcast has responded that Netflix’s complaints are overblown and that such paid interconnection deals are commonplace.

But if Comcast is able to get a foot in the door of colleges by giving them a way to reduce their bandwidth costs while also grabbing hold of younger viewers, Netflix might have more to be worried about.